Virtual Iron Software Inc. bills itself as a VMware alternative and has released version 3.5 of Virtual Iron virtualization software.
New in 3.5 are support for iSCSI -- a less expensive form of networked storage than traditional Fibre Channel -- and LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) directory services, in addition to Microsoft Active Directory support.
For more cost-conscious customers, the company has also removed restrictions about how its management software can be deployed. In the past, the company required that it be installed on a separate server. Now, Virtual Iron supports what it calls "single-server installations," whereby the management station can be installed as a virtual machine.
Virtual Iron also announced its latest customer, PGA TOUR Superstore (PGATSS), a large-footprint retailer focused on golf and tennis. The Atlanta, Georgia-based firm recently deployed Virtual Iron software across four Hewlett-Packard c-Class BladeSystem blades for about one-fifth the cost of purchasing VMware ESX, said Gentry Ganote, PGATSS CIO.
Cost aside, the other benefit Ganote identified is server provisioning. "It used to take me at least a week to get a new server up and running," he said. Now, he can deploy a new application in under thirty minutes, he said, by creating a virtual machine on a pre-existing Virtual Iron node.
Ganote also said that virtualizing his systems has also given him better visibility into system performance. "It's easier
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to monitor what's going on with the virtualization tools -- you can watch the disk I/O, CPU utilization and network throughout all in one place. It's really amazing."
Virtual Iron prices its virtualization software at $499 per socket. It also offers a free single-server version that allows consolidation of up to 80 Windows or Linux guests.
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